


Equilibrium

by kuumai



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 03:13:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19737172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuumai/pseuds/kuumai
Summary: “Where did you go after you were kicked out of the Galaxy Garrison?”That’s what Lance asks Keith in the middle of the night, several days after they defeated Sendak, several minutes after they sat next to each other on the floor of the bridge, not bothering to turn on the lights.





	Equilibrium

“Where did you go after you were kicked out of the Galaxy Garrison?”

That’s what Lance asks Keith in the middle of the night, several days after they defeated Sendak, several minutes after they sat next to each other on the floor of the bridge, not bothering to turn on the lights. 

Where did you go?

Keith wants to say that there was nowhere to go. There was nowhere to go, so he went nowhere. 

He left the Galaxy Garrison with the clothes on his back and his mother’s knife. He fled. 

He wants to say that when Earth lost the mission to one of Pluto’s moons, he lost the only family he had left. 

But Keith isn’t really Shiro’s family, he supposed. If he were Shiro’s family, someone would have told him that the team that went to Kerberos was gone, declared dead. He wouldn’t have found out from a news article. 

He wants to say that he didn’t flee without purpose. He _knew_ Shiro wasn’t dead. It wasn’t just denial, contrary to what Commander Iverson yelled in his face prior to suspending him indefinitely. It wasn’t just that Shiro said he would never give up on him, and that he felt a duty to never give up on Shiro, though he supposed that was part of it. 

It was a feeling, deeper than the gut instinct that he relied on to get by since his dad died, that made him steal Shiro’s car the day they met. It was a feeling in the core of his being. 

He wants to say that, but it sounds cheesy. Unbelievable. Fake. Maybe it is. Maybe he just invented this feeling. Maybe he just didn’t want to return to the group home. Maybe he just wanted to have a purpose, and the only purpose he could dream up was to search for Shiro. 

But, no, that feeling led him to the blue lion. To Voltron. To Shiro. 

Shiro’s back now, but that doesn’t change the fact that Keith lived alone in a desert for a year. He was seventeen at the time, not quite aged out of the system, so they should’ve sent him back to the home, but no one seemed to care enough the chase after him when he fled. 

So he followed that feeling into the desert that surrounded the Galaxy Garrison. He followed it to an abandoned, one-room house in that desert that reminded him so strongly of the house that he’d grown up in until his dad passed. His home. His last real home until he met Shiro; then Shiro became his home. 

Yes, it hurt, it hurt when he lost his dad and his home, but when that happened, he knew it was permanent. He knew his dad was gone and not coming back. He knew _grief._ But Shiro didn’t deserve grief. Not yet. He deserved for the Galaxy Garrison to investigate the mission to Kerberos. He deserved a search and rescue mission. He deserved _hope_ , just as much as Earth deserved to know for certain whether it’s heroes were gone, just as much as Colleen and Katie Holt deserved the truth about what happened to the mission to Kerberos, just as much as Keith…. 

That was what he yelled to Commander Iverson before he was kicked out, and that was the point at which Commander Iverson cut off his rant. 

And that was just as well. Keith doesn’t really deserve anything. Doesn’t deserve Shiro, that is. He only selfishly, selfishly wished that the man who believed in him when no one would, the first person he truly dared to love after the death of his father, was still alive. He had to believe Shiro was alive, because Keith didn’t know what his purpose would be if he wasn’t. 

So he searched. He followed that feeling to a cave with weird markings that didn’t seem to match any language on Earth. He stole tech from the Garrison and food from the only grocery store in a million miles. He made notes of strange occurrences and radio waves. 

He watched a ship crash in the desert. He set off a bomb for a distraction. He broke into the facility that held whatever was on that ship. 

He found Shiro _._

He also stumbled upon three strange cadets from the Galaxy Garrison. 

They found the blue lion. They went to space. They met aliens. They formed Voltron. They saved a planet. 

They were supposed to save the universe. 

That was Keith’s new purpose. He fulfilled his last one. 

He found Shiro _._

Shiro, different. Shiro, anew. Shiro with a prosthetic arm and a scar across his nose and white hair on his head and monsters in his mind. 

But the morning after he found Shiro, he woke to see Shiro standing outside, watching the sun rise. And Shiro had turned around and looked at him with so much affection that it clogged his throat and made his eyes water. That morning was when he knew he would be okay. That morning was when equilibrium was restored, if only for a moment. 

Maybe he didn’t find Shiro. Maybe Shiro found him. 

That would make sense. He had certainly felt lost before then, tethered to the Earth by a single rope, and that rope was his faith that Shiro was out there somewhere. 

Now he isn’t on Earth at all. Now he’s floating through space without solid ground to stand upon, and now he’s tethered to Shiro himself. But also to the red lion. To Voltron. To the universe. He’s a part of something so much bigger than just himself and Shiro. He has a purpose beyond finding the one man who cared about him. He has a glimmering of hope that others care about him as well.

(Keith remembers Hunk throwing an arm around his shoulders, pulling him and Lance close, declaring them to be _brothers._ )

He has a tether, and that’s why he isn’t afraid when Lance, the one who constantly bickers with him, the one who forgot or pretended to forget that they had a bonding moment, finds him alone on the bridge. In the morning they would return to their fighting that never ended, only paused in certain unpredictable moments, like when Lance was nearly comatose and gave him a smile whose brightness rivaled the stars that surrounded them, like when he sat alone on the floor of the bridge watching those stars, remembering, and Lance found him and sat next to him and didn’t bother to turn on the lights. In the morning, everything would return to the way it would always be, to the way it was supposed to be, to the status quo. In the morning the universe would be righted. In the morning equilibrium would be restored. 

But right now Lance is patiently awaiting an answer, and right now Keith is watching the stars as though they might reveal the answer he could give to satisfy Lance, and right now Keith is trying not to think about how, in space, morning never really comes in the way to which they are accustomed, so in space there is no status quo, no equilibrium, not really. 

Where did you go after you were kicked out of the Galaxy Garrison, Lance asks without a trace of mocking or malice in his voice. 

Nowhere. 

Wherever that feeling led. 

To the house in the desert that reminded him of Dad. 

To Shiro.

The stars don’t hold sufficient words to tell his story, but he still refuses to look away from them.

He inhales. He exhales. 

Where did you go?

“Away.”


End file.
